I am working on a simple joint surface. I need to create surfaces and not solid parts because i later send it to Abaqus for analysis and if i can make my part with surfaces it saves me a lot of time and gives a quick analysis.

So, please find attached .sldprt i currently have. it is really simple and done with couple of surfaces.

The thing that is bothering me is that when i transfer this file to abaqus the edges in Solidworks that are shown BLUE are considered free edges. And when i have free edges the calculation is wrong and i have to do more work.

And you can see also on the pictures with even more simple cases that i have edges blue color (free edges)

I have tried with knit function but didn't succeed on making it work.

Is there a way to somehow make this surfaces one part ? or to merge them so they can be one ? Or any way to make this blue edges not free ?

Thanks a lot as always. everyone in this community has been helpful a lot.

You just need to trim away Surface-Trim3 where it extends into the angled bars, then you will be able to knit those 3 surfaces together.

If you want to merge those with Surface-Extrude1 also then you'll need to delete the faces from those bodies that lie on Surface-Extrude1, and also trim away Surface-Extrude1 to have holes where the bars intersect it.

I think an easier approach would be to model it all as solid first, merging everythign as you go. Then at the end you could do a Delete Face feature to delete the ends of the bars and that will convert the whole thing into a surface body.